The family of jailed former solicitor and property developer Michael Lynn has been living in a house in Co Wicklow owned by a company incorporated months before the house was purchased.
Before being sent to prison in December after being found guilty of stealing almost €18 million from six financial institutions, Lynn was living in the house in Brittas, Co Wicklow.
It is understood his wife, Bríd Murphy, continues to live in the detached single-storey house on its own grounds, which was bought in December 2021 for €460,000.
The property is owned by a Dublin company, Ribblesway Limited, which was incorporated in May 2021. Asked about Ribblesway, Ms Murphy has said she does not want to comment.
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There is no mortgage registered by the company in the Companies Registration Office, and no mortgage registered against the house in Tailte Éireann, formerly the Land Registry. The property does not appear in the Residential Tenancies Board register, where landlords are obliged to register all private tenancies.
Lynn’s address on court documents in the two trials he faced (the first, in 2022, ended with a hung jury) was given as Millbrook Court, Redcross, Co Wicklow, but he and his family are understood to have been living in the house in Brittas since late 2022.
The four-bedroom property on half an acre, which is close to the beach, sold for significantly over its asking price when it was bid for by several interested parties two years ago.
Lynn is a former solicitor who set up a property company, Kendar Holdings, in 2003, and became involved in property development, first in Ireland but later in continental Europe. After his property and legal businesses came under investigation near the end of the boom, he moved to Europe where he was reported to be involved in property ventures, before moving to Brazil where he lived for a time before being extradited to Ireland in 2018 to face trial.
He was accused of stealing approximately €27 million from several financial institutions and found guilty of 10 of the 21 charges brought against him. The charges on which he was found guilty involved approximately €18 million.
Lynn has now been sentenced to five and a half years by Judge Martin Nolan of the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, who took into account the time Lynn spent in prison in Brazil while fighting extradition.
The latest unaudited accounts for Ribblesway show it had fixed assets worth €433,756 and current assets of €311,329 at the end of April 2023, but that its debts meant it had net liabilities of €18,182. To whom the debts are owed is not stated. There is no mortgage registered against the company in the Companies Registration Office.
The directors of the company are Yavor Todorov Poptoshev (48), a Bulgarian national with an address in Dublin, and John Holleran (59), a UK national with an address in London. Mr Holleran, who was appointed a director of Ribblesway earlier this month, is the company’s sole shareholder. Requests for comment from both men have met no response.
At Lynn’s sentencing hearing on Monday in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, barrister Paul Comiskey O’Keeffe, for Lynn, handed in documents in support of sentence mitigation for his client, including a document in which John Holleran said he had met Lynn in the UK through a friend and was aware of his “difficulties.”
Mr Holleran, the court was told, had sold a big utilities construction business in the UK and invested in Ireland, and had been interested in employing the services of Lynn.
Lynn, the court was told, had been “preoccupied” with his trial and did not become involved in the venture. However, the court heard, Mr Holleran remained open to employing Lynn in the future.
In recent proceedings he has taken in the High Court, Mr Poptoshev has described himself as a friend and associate of Lynn’s and said in an affidavit that he provided assistance to Lynn during his trial in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Mr Poptoshev is a former director of a Slovakian company called Krtek SRO. Lynn’s wife, Brid Murphy, also served as a director of the company in the period after Lynn’s business operation fell apart and before they moved to Brazil. She had an address in Portugal in corporate filings in Slovakia from the mid-2010s.
Company filings in Ireland show that Mr Poptoshev is a director or secretary of eight Irish companies set up between 2019 and 2023, that Mr Holleran is a director of two of them, and shareholder in four of them. Mr Poptoshev is the owner of three of them, while another is majority-owned by a Bulgarian company called Grafton Ltd, which is linked to Krtek SRO.
Kinsella Mitchell & Associates, of Prussia Street, Dublin 7, which provided services to Lynn and his property company, Kendar Holdings, during the property boom, is providing services to the companies associated with Mr Poptoshev and Mr Halleron.
Some of the companies appear not to have traded but others appear to have been involved in property dealings in Dublin. They have various registered addresses.
During Lynn’s trial, John Kinsella, of Kinsella & Associates, gave evidence that statements of affairs used by Lynn when applying for loans from banks, which purported to come from his accountancy firm, were forgeries. Lynn did not contest Mr Kinsella’s evidence. A request for a comment from the firm met no response.
Near the end of Lynn’s sentencing hearing in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, barrister Joe Mulrean, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said there might be an application for a confiscation of assets order under the Criminal Justice Act 1994 in relation to property and banks accounts. Judge Martin put the matter back to April 16th next.
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